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First Response: Agenda for 2007 |
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Written by Joe Randeen
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Page 1 of 3 First Response: Agenda for 2007
by Don Williams
What has happened in 2006 that sets the agenda for 2007? Consider the following:
1. The “outing” of Ted Haggard – the continuing sexual crisis in the church.
2. The move to ordain and marry practicing, self-affirming gays with schism in the mainline churches.
3. The ignorance of the spiritual underpinnings of the war in Iraq.
4. The emerging church movement morphing into the missional church movement.
5. Time Magazine making you the “person of the year” through the Internet Revolution.
6. The task of redeeming culture without assimilating to it: the continuing challenge of rock 'n roll.
7. Church growth and influence shifting to the southern hemisphere.
8. Your item on the list.
The old year is out and the new year in. What carries over from 2006 that becomes our agenda for the new year?
The “Outing” of Ted Haggard – The Continuing Sexual Crisis for the Church.
Ted Haggard, mega-church pastor and President of the National Association of Evangelicals, had his three year encounters with a gay prostitute in Denver exposed. After some vagueness, and then admition, he was removed from his pulpit and resigned from his presidency. His church staggered in grief and pain. The liberal press bashed evangelicals for their hypocrisy. This, of course, was the tip of the iceberg. For years, the Roman Catholic Church effectively covered for sexual predator priests by moving them around or offering limited counseling and treatment. Then the lid was blown off and hundreds of cases went to the courts. Over a billion dollars are at stake in legal fees and settlements. More importantly, as with Haggard, the integrity of the church has been severely compromised. Rolling Stone reported in its year-end issue that a recent poll by ChristiaNet.com revealed that 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to pornography. What can we learn from this bleak landscape?
While many of us are in denial, in the words of Psychiatrist Gerald May, “We are all addicts in every sense of the word.” With our sexualized culture and wide-open access to pornography, not only are Biblical ethics under siege but the culture itself is intentionally making us sicker and sicker, triggering the brain's pleasure center with constant stimulation until we are literally out of control. There must be at least two responses to this crisis.
First, we must get out of denial and into committed community where our sexual issues are on the table. In the words of A.A., “When you isolate, you're sick,”and, “You're as sick as your secrets.” Ted Haggard fed his moral failure and resulting sickness by isolating himself (he gave his servicer a false identity) and creating a sexual fantasy life which he then acted out. “Where your eyes go your feet follow.” (Jamie Wilson)
Second, we must seek healing for the issues behind our broken sexuality. This cannot be limited to standard therapy (although helpful) and may include deliverance from demons. It also will include praying into past pain and forgiving abusers (often found in childhood) and the regeneration of our self-image. Is the church ready for this? In most cases, hardly!
The Move to Ordain and Marry Practicing, Self-affirming Gays with Schism in the Mainline Churches.
The Episcopal Church is breaking apart and the larger Anglican communion faces fracture. A gay Bishop (with a live-in lover) rules in New England. Whole Dioceses threaten to depart from the national structure. Congregations are going to court to keep their property as they leave. Other mainline churches are in similar travail, including the United Presbyterian Church which is split down the middle on the gay issue.
The church's understanding of homosexuality and its commitment to Biblical authority are at stake here. On one side, we are told to be a “welcoming church” just like Jesus. We are told he had nothing to say about homosexuality and that he accepted all who came to him. We are also told that the Bible sees homosexuality as “perversion” (straight people having gay sex) rather than “inversion” (same-sex attraction from birth). While evangelical and charismatic churches are not immediately threatened by this issue, their time will come. As the older generation retires and dies out, a new generation is coming, raised on post-modern relativism and the total secular acceptance of the gay life-style. Discrimination against gays is seen as equivalent to discrimination against other minorities. (Blacks, Hispanics, physically challenged, etc.) Shouldn't gays have the legal right to marriage just like straights? Moreover, the church often is guilty of “homophobia,” and has little to offer gay people who are struggling with their sexuality. Its answer is largely: Stay celibate and stay in the closet. But for the emerging generation, this won't work and the time will come (perhaps a decade away) when even strongly evangelical churches are forced to deal directly with this issue and may well split over it. The old antithesis of either acceptance or rejection oversimplifies the gay issue.
Acceptance, on the one hand, means approving of gays in their sexual brokenness and even celebrating them there. It minimizes the pain that they are in, not simply externally from a hostile church (and older culture), but on the inside – as most (especially males) are either self-admitted or “in denial” sexual addicts. Rejection, on the other hand, is not only anti-Jesus, it means that the Law rather than the gospel wins (“gay bashing”). What is the alternative? Clearly there must be a third way to maintain Biblical integrity and offer healing to the sexually broken. The church's challenge will be to both uphold Biblical truth and offer grace and healing. The lies must be challenged. We reject, “God made me gay” and, “Healing homosexuality is going against nature.” But the healing alternative must be displayed in the life of our redeemed and being redeemed communities. This must include walking in the truth of God's creation as male and female, developing healthy heterosexual relationships and intentional healing prayer. Here is grace and hope, restoring what is lost in the Fall and stolen by the enemy. But will the church practically go for it?
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First Response 
